091: SEO Wins for Beauty & Wellness Awards: Real Website Audit with Kelly Rose

In this episode, Jules White is joined for a website SEO audit by Kelly Rose from the Beauty and Skincare Awards, sharing practical tips and quick wins that any beauty or wellness business can use to boost website visibility and drive more entries and event sales - without feeling overwhelmed.

Jules and Kelly discuss what it takes for an awards website to stand out, attract the right traffic, and convert more visitors into award applicants and event attendees. From making the benefits of entering crystal clear, to the importance of analytics, navigation, and building authority, this episode is packed with bite-sized, actionable advice.

Key Takeaways:

• Track Your Success: Why setting up Google Analytics and Google Search Console is a must for understanding where your website visitors come from—and how to use that data for smarter marketing decisions. (If you need help, check out Jules' Google Analytics 4 setup mini course.)
• Clarity on Your Homepage: How to quickly show who your awards are for, what the benefits are, and guide people to the next step - especially on mobile.
• Easy Navigation: Make it simple for different professionals (like lash techs or aesthetics clinics) to find their category, with clear menu options and dedicated category pages.
• Optimise Page Titles & Headings: Why using the right heading structure and making the most of your SEO titles and descriptions can help Google and your users know what each page is about.
• Small Tweaks, Big Results: The value of ‘quick wins’ - like adjusting font size, button clarity, and removing wasted white space - can make a real difference to both SEO and conversions.
• Building Authority: How linking to industry judges’ websites (not just Instagram), and showcasing testimonials and stats from past winners, can improve your authority and ranking in search engines.
• Create Authority Content: Instead of endless blogging, focus on creating helpful, relevant articles - like ‘the benefits of entering beauty awards’ - and link them to your key sales pages.
• Start Where You Are: Don’t try to do everything at once. Focus on the small improvements first, then build up your site’s authority over time.

If you’re ready to get hands-on with your own website, you can book a Website Clarity Power Hour for expert, no-jargon support - whether you want a quick audit or help setting up your analytics.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

• Beauty and Skincare Awards UK – official website
• Follow Kelly and the Awards on Instagram
• Beginners Google Analytics 4 Course - GA4 Made Simple (& Google Search Console) – Step-by-step guide to setting up and using Google Search Console, id

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction and Goals
• 1:55 Current Website and Marketing Overview
• 4:11 Importance of Analytics Tools
• 7:31 SEO and Conversion Optimization
• 10:23 Category Navigation and User Experience
• 13:23 Technical SEO Tips
• 19:11 Optimizing Your Logo for Mobile
• 19:18 Improving Page Titles and Descriptions
• 21:29 Understanding Page Structure and Headings
• 23:54 Using SEO Tools for Better Analysis
• 25:01 Enhancing User Journey and Content
• 28:21 Importance of Links and Domain Authority
• 31:33 The Value of Blogs and Written Content
• 34:56 Final Tips and Encouragement

Transcript

AI-GENERATED TRANSCRIPT - MAY CONTAIN ERRORS

Introduction and Goals

Jules White: So, hi. Today we're diving into a website SEO Audit with Kelly from the Beauty and Skincare Awards. Hopefully, by the end of this episode, we'll have identified one or two key areas that you can focus on to reach your goals over the next six months.

So welcome, Kelly. It's great to have you here. Thank you.

Kelly Rose: It's so nice to be here.

Jules White: So, if we were to meet in six months' time and you were telling me about the amazing things happening in your business, how would your website be helping with that?

Kelly Rose: So, in six months' time, we'll be coming up to our live event. By that point, it would be amazing to just grow the entries that we have coming through the website.

So it would be amazing if we were driving more traffic to it and that more people are aware of what we do. We are really focused on the integrity of our awards and making our processes really transparent. So it'd be great if more people were aware of what we do and how we really represent the industry as a whole, and to have people come to our events.

We try and reach all corners of the industry for our live event, which is the Beauty and Skincare Awards, which is taking place in Birmingham this year in November. It would be great for that event to sell out. We had a sold-out event last year. This year, we've doubled the capacity of our venue.

So I think our main goals would be more traffic to the website so that people are more aware of what we do, have an incredible sell-out event to really celebrate everything the industry does, and just receive hundreds and hundreds of entries into this year's awards.

Jules White: Brilliant. Fantastic. That's some really great goals there.

Current Website and Marketing Overview

Jules White: So, before I share my screen and we dive in, just tell us a little bit more about your business and how your website currently sits within your sort of marketing activities.

Kelly Rose: Yeah, absolutely. Our website is where all of the entries come through.

As the Beauty and Skincare Awards, people can self-nominate. We are not a popularity contest or anything like that, so we truly believe that everyone who feels like they do great work in the industry should be able to put themselves forward. After they've entered, it's a process where they go on our Instagram page and they can have clients comment on the great work that they do to further support their application.

So, at the moment, people go on the website, they enter through our website, they then get a form which is automatically sent to them via email. They fill that out, and then that goes to our judges to review to see if they make it through to the finals. Where it sits in our marketing is that a lot of people do come through Instagram, but then they naturally go onto the website and also vice versa as well.

It's quite interesting to see, metrics-wise, how many people come through Instagram and how many people do just find our website, but then go onto our Instagram and check us out that way. Our website's a great hub to show previous winners and for people to enter. But with Instagram, it's so visual, isn't it?

And for a live event like we do, people love to see what the event's all about, you know, what we do, what happened last year. So, yeah, there's a mix of people that come directly to the website and also go from our Instagram and Facebook to the website itself.

Jules White: Do you know where those people who are coming directly to your website are coming from? Are there other places that people are finding you outside of Instagram or outside of socials in general?

Kelly Rose: Yeah. We don't track it at the moment.

It's something that I'd love to do more of. Quite a few of our finalists and previous winners are featured in press articles and on websites where they've been featured in the press. So, if we have a backlink on that, quite a few people do come through kind of the press route.

But apart from that, I know a lot come through Facebook, Instagram, but we don't really know where everyone else comes from. It's something that we definitely want to look into more in the future.

Importance of Analytics Tools

Jules White: Yeah, so do you have anything set up like Google Analytics or Google Search Console or anything?

Kelly Rose: We don't at the moment, no.

Jules White: So that would definitely be, that's always my first recommendation anyway. Whenever I'm working with clients, if you don't have those analytics set up, then I would definitely do that.

It's so powerful for your website. There are two tools that I've mentioned there. So, Google Analytics, they're both free tools from Google and anybody can set them up, and they're fairly simple to set up. I actually have a little short course on my website that teaches you how to set them up and the basics of using them as well, because they can sometimes feel really overwhelming, especially Google Analytics, which tends to be the one that people have heard of.

People have generally heard of analytics and like, oh yeah, I should have Google Analytics. Google Analytics tells you how people came to your website and what action they took when they were there. So, it shows you what pages they've interacted with, how long they've spent on those pages, whether they've sort of immediately bounced off of your website or whether they've stayed there and taken some action.

You can set it up to show you events. For example, if somebody clicks a button to book a call with you, or clicks on particular areas, like if it was a salon, somebody booked to buy a product or make an appointment, it would tell you that as well. You can set it up to tell you that. Whereas Google Search Console is the one that's lesser heard of.

Fewer people have heard of it. It's actually easier to use than Google Analytics. What Google Search Console does is it helps you to understand how Google sees your website. It will actually show you what keywords and key phrases people are typing into Google that Google is then associating with your website.

The reason that we always focus on Google is because even now, even with AI search and everything, still more than 90% of searches that go through a search engine go through Google. So that's why we focus on Google. The things that you do for Google will also help you to then show up in the other search engines as well.

But it's really important because it helps you. I think one of the key things when I'm working with clients on this is we can discover what Google is associating with your website, but more importantly what it's not. Sometimes we sort of, you know, people don't necessarily take that step back and think about what do I want to be showing up for?

What are the basic things that I should be showing up for on Google? Like for yourself? Beauty and skincare awards. Is Google associating that term with your website? It's likely that it is because it's part of your domain name, and that does, it does help, definitely. But it's something that it's certainly worth having those tools set up so that you can then understand what's happening with that data and where you are getting people coming in through search and to other areas as well.

Do you do any email marketing or anything like that?

Kelly Rose: We do, yeah.

Jules White: So you can also then see that within your Google Analytics. You can see how many people are coming to your website from your emails.

You can even set up tags so you know specifically which email has sent people in. You can also see how many people are coming from socials and all of the different areas that people are coming into your website. So I would definitely say that's my first tip, but it's really important.

Even if you think, "Well, I'm not going to do anything with this at the moment," if you get it set up, it can be there gathering data in the background. So when you are then at a point where you're like, "Right, yeah. I need to focus on this. I want to understand this information," then you've got that information there that has gathered in the background, really.

Kelly Rose: Yeah. Amazing. Definitely do that. Thank you.

Jules White: Yeah. Yeah. I think it's so important. It's so often, even if people have got it set up, they don't necessarily look at it regularly enough to actually make some informed decisions about it, really.

Kelly Rose: Yeah. Brilliant.

SEO and Conversion Optimisation

Jules White: So, I'm just going to start sharing my screen.

Fantastic. Right, so from looking at your website, one of the... I am going to talk about some conversion points as well because I think it does all tie in together. Certainly with some of the things that I've sort of had a quick look at your website and some of the things I've noticed there, there are things that you could do that would help not only with your SEO and with actually getting more traffic from Google and other search engines, but I think that from doing those things, that would probably help with your conversions as well as people actually coming to your website. Great.

So, one of the things I always say, when people come onto your website, ideally within three seconds, we want them to know what you do, how you're going to make their life better, and what they need to do to get it. If I actually come over onto the responsive version, so this is just showing what your website looks like on mobile, realistically, the majority of your clients, or the people that are going to be applying for the awards, are people that are going to be looking on mobile.

This is something else you can see in Google Analytics. It will actually tell you what percentage of your website visitors are coming from mobile and what are coming from desktop. The majority of people are coming on mobile, so it's always worth thinking about that first. But ideally, we want our website to look good and do its job well on whatever device people are looking at our websites on.

I would definitely say one thing that's probably missing from your site is actually talking about the benefits of why people would want to apply for the awards, what's in it for them, basically. Obviously, you're saying what you do, and that's great that you've got that information there. But who's it for, and what is it going to do for their business?

How is it going to help them? Because obviously it's a massive thing that if it, it's going to raise the authority of any businesses that actually, especially the ones that get through to the finals. It's so, so important for them. Digital PR, and this is a way for them to build their digital PR, is even more important as we move into more AI searches and AI overviews, the way that those, the AI bots are actually deciding what websites to show.

It, the foundations of SEO have to be in there. So people have to have those basics in place on their website, but those AI bots are also going to be going out and actually looking for other places that those websites have been mentioned and authoritative places that those websites have been mentioned as well. So that's something that you can build that into your messaging of the ways that people coming in and entering the awards, and especially winning the awards, what it can do for their business.

Kelly Rose: Yeah, absolutely.

Jules White: I would definitely say to try and get that in here, you know, in this top, top area here, really. Whether you could maybe make this into a button or something that looks a little bit clearer on actually this is where you need to click, rather than it just being text with an underline. If that's a button, people are much more likely to click on it.

Okay. Yeah. Also think about the people that are coming into the website.

Category Navigation and User Experience

Jules White: What is their level of awareness? Are they people who already know that they want to enter the awards, or are they people that are trying to learn more or they're curious about it? You will have different people coming into your website at different stages. Yeah, and also it's not always easy on the homepage. The homepage often will have more than one call to action, more than one thing that you want people to do.

Whereas actually, with any other page on your website, ideally, we do just want one call to action if we can, a maximum of two. So it's whether people want to apply for an award or find out more, and maybe you have that there within this section. If somebody's ready to apply, they've come here, they've already explored, and they know that they want to apply.

What is the next thing that they need to do? Maybe actually the next thing that they need to do is find out what categories they want to apply for.

Kelly Rose: Yeah.

Jules White: And thinking about that, so I know you've got this process here. Come down to this in a minute. But thinking about that, of actually, okay.

How do they know? How do they know what, how do they sort it in terms of what category they're going to go into? What the best categories are for them? And do you have anything like that? Have you thought about the sort of customer journey through the site and how people actually would decide what categories to go into?

Kelly Rose: Yeah, so I think when we first set up the website, it was mainly from sort of the point of view when I've applied for awards myself as like a skin specialist, and I thought about sort of that sort of journey and then coming from it from that point of view.

I think because what we try and do is we really segregate out the categories. So it should be quite obvious what people want to apply for. So if they, for example, if there's an aesthetics practitioner, there's an aesthetics practitioner category. If they're a skin specialist, there's a skin specialist category.

They're like a lash technician. We have a lash artist category and things like that. So I think the categories are fairly self-explanatory, but what we have thought about doing previously is putting them sort of, instead of it all being on one page, have a dropdown menu of aesthetics, salon categories, things like that to segregate it out a little bit more.

Jules White: Yeah. I think you've really hit the nail on the head there of actually, from what you've described there immediately, if you could add that into your navigation menu, as well as on your homepage as well. Absolutely.

I think that could make a massive difference to how people can navigate your website. It's all about not making them burn extra mental calories. So if they can immediately see, if I am a lash technician, if I am an aesthetics clinic, so that people click on it and they can immediately. It's obvious to them.

And is there, I'm guessing that there will be somewhere there'd be crossover between the different categories depending on what they do. So that's great then that these are the specific categories for your industry and you might also consider these categories here as well.

Kelly Rose: Yeah.

Jules White: I think that would be a really, really good way to make it clearer. Make your navigation menu a little bit easier to navigate.

Definitely. Okay. And for people then, just to not be confused. That's something that sort of prevents people from actually taking action on your site. If someone's confused, then they just won't do it.

Technical SEO Tips

Jules White: The way that that will help with your SEO as well is then you're going to have pages that will talk to those particular keywords of lash technician or those kind of things, really. And you could actually build that out as like category pages on the site as well.

So I haven't, let's have a little look. If I click into one of these, I think this takes you through just to a checkout page, doesn't it? It does, yeah. So you could then create some category pages. So it would be Beauty and Skincare awards.co.uk/lash-technicians or something like that.

Or even maybe even lash technicians awards, or you definitely would want to spend some time thinking about this. This is where if you have Google Search Console set up, then you could think about, what are you not showing up for in Google Search Console that you actually, yeah, you would want to?

And if you were doing that, so let's take for example, Beauty Therapist of the Year. I think that could potentially be a good category page. So you would create that. So it would be Beauty and Skincare Awards.co.uk/beauty-therapist-of-the-year. You could maybe, yeah. No, actually I probably would put in, because it's short, I'd say dash of dash the dash year.

Kelly Rose: Yeah.

Jules White: And that would immediately help Google to understand that you are involved in Beauty Therapist of the Year awards. And then within that page, you ideally, with any page on our website, we want it to have at least 350 words if we can.

Otherwise, Google classes it as sort of thin content. So within Beauty Therapist of the Year, that page maybe have something in there that explains about the awards because if you think about those kind of pages, somebody could potentially land on that page. Ideally, people should be able to come into any page of your website and not know anything about what you do, and immediately understand what you do, what's in it for them, how to get it, et cetera.

You could definitely have something at the top of the page, explaining about the awards, explaining specifically about Beauty Therapists of the Year, what would be the benefits to them of actually doing that. And it doesn't have to be a ton of content, and we definitely don't want a wall of text. So if you think about ways that you can explain that, in lists or maybe a table.

Yeah, or bullet points, icons, pictures, anything like that that can help people to understand and break up that text. You'd want to be using headings. I'm going to talk about headings in a minute as well, because I saw that as something as a potential SEO. Um, yeah, something you could fix quite quickly, really.

But you could definitely do that. And that would also then link to the other pages. So it would link to the pages for Lash Technician of the Year. It would link to pages for Aesthetics Practitioner of the Year because that is a sort of very general one of Beauty Therapist of the Year that has the potential to create some great internal links on your website.

Kelly Rose: Yeah, makes sense.

Jules White: And the way that we link our website together is really important because it helps Google to crawl through your website and understand everything in the context of all the different stuff on your website, but it also helps to keep people there longer as well, which is good for SEO.

It's good for conversion.

Kelly Rose: Absolutely.

Jules White: People are much more likely to take action on our website if they're there longer and they can understand more about what we do, really.

Kelly Rose: Yeah. So perfect.

Jules White: I think that you've got some real opportunity there for just thinking about how can we make it easier for people to understand where they need to go, what they need to do, learn more about this, and then create those category pages around that, really.

Kelly Rose: Yeah. Brilliant.

Jules White: One thing I would just say as a quick tweak that you could do is this. We're talking about desktop here, and you will have some visitors from desktop. Definitely.

Especially if people are in a salon and they're on the computer, they're thinking about it when they're at work. Then there will be some people coming through from desktop. But maybe think about just making your logo a little bit smaller here, like whipping it up into one of the corners because this is the most important space on your website.

This bit above the scroll. Above the fold, we call it. So that bit when people land on your page and then before they start scrolling, is the most valuable space on your website. And this is a lot of white space here. So, yeah, I would definitely say to maybe make your logo a bit smaller. Maybe make your navigation menu a font a little bit bigger.

Google isn't keen on font below font size below 16. I'm going to look at this. So it is 14 actually. So immediately upping that font size is helpful. Anything like, we don't want people to have to get their glasses out to read our website, basically, and especially on mobile as well. Sometimes it's even more so on mobile.

People can sometimes think we need to have a smaller font on mobile, but actually, if anything, it is slightly the opposite. We need it to be the right size, basically. We don't want giant fonts that then people have got to scroll all the way down the page to read the basic information. But I would maybe look at that and look at it on an actual mobile as well, because sometimes it does look a bit different on these tools that I use on desktop.

But I would say from looking at your navigation menu there, you could maybe have the font size a little bit bigger and make sure there's plenty of room around it as well. So that if somebody's tapping and they've got slightly bigger fingers or a little bit more accessibility problems, make sure that they can tap on that screen and they're not going to tap on the wrong place.

Google likes a space around buttons and links and things like that as well. It can be an SEO factor as well that Google does take that into account when it's ranking websites.

Optimising Your Logo for Mobile

Kelly Rose: Brilliant.

Jules White: So again, same thing with your logo. Make your logo a little bit smaller on the mobile version as well, definitely.

Improving Page Titles and Descriptions

Jules White: And whenever we are looking at webpages and we are looking for sort of quick wins and things that you could do to immediately make it clearer to Google and to the bots on what the website is about, we look at the page structure. So I'm going to just fire up one of my little SEO tools.

This immediately tells me about what you've got on your page title and your page description, and I think there is some room for improvement there, definitely.

Kelly Rose: Yeah.

Jules White: The page title is the thing that you see when your website shows up in a Google search. The page title is the blue link that we get.

And that, obviously, it does need to tie in with what the page is about, and this is great, except for you are repeating it twice there. So you could definitely use ChatGPT to help you with this as well. I'm not a copywriter. I always say that, but I'm not a copywriter. But just thinking about what do you want this page to be ranking for on Google and how can you get that in there?

Definitely have the Beauty and Skincare Awards UK in there, but you only need it once. With this, we want to keep it under 70 characters if we can, which is great that you've got that there. But making sure that you are using those 70 characters as much as you can is really helpful. I did ask ChatGPT for an idea for a description.

Realistically, the description is the thing that then when you've got those blue links on Google, the description is the bit that shows underneath it and it's the bit that encourages people to click through to your website.

Kelly Rose: Yeah.

Jules White: So again, thinking about what you're trying to get this page ranking for, get that in there as well. So ChatGPT didn't actually prompt it with "this is what we're trying to rank this page for."

I just said, "Give me a better idea for a description here." And it said it is accelerating the best in beauty and skincare. Discover how these UK Skincare awards spotlight innovation excellence and standout brands in the industry. I definitely think that you could get Beauty and Skincare awards in there as well. But that's something just as an idea of how you can improve that page description.

You would do that in the backend of your Shopify. There will be a spot for you to add your page descriptions in there, really. One thing to note is if people don't set a page description, Google will just take some content from the page and put that in there. You may even find that Google is already doing that.

If you Google your website, you might find that Google isn't actually showing this 'recognising excellence'. It might not be showing that in there.

Understanding Page Structure and Headings

Jules White: Then when you look at your pages, ideally we want to follow a hierarchy that's a bit like an English essay. This helps Google's bots and also accessibility readers as well to understand the content of our page.

So ideally we, if you would think about it, if you were back at school and you were writing an English essay, you would have one heading and then you'd have some subheadings within that. Then maybe you would have some sub-subheadings or some subtopics within those H1s. So we would have H1s, H2s, H3s.

Realistically, for most websites, you don't need to go lower than an H3. Certainly, for the majority of websites, that would be fine for you, really. So you are missing an H1 heading, and that is the most important heading that tells Google what this page is about. So you could have that. You could just literally, with this, the Beauty and Skincare Awards UK, you could have that as your H1 heading, or you could choose something else.

You could have Beauty and Skincare Award somewhere higher up the page or have something in there that, it depends on what you're trying to get this page to rank for. But yeah, there's definitely some room for improvement there. One thing you could do immediately is just go in and change what you've got there already to H1.

That will help Google to understand the page. Try not to have any headings that have got empty text in them if you can, that's probably going to be some rogue box somewhere that's got that.

Then I often feel it's good to take a step back and think about this like maybe in a Google Doc or something where you think about, okay, this is my page. What are the important topics that I need to cover within that? So you have, you've got your categories within this.

Thinking about, maybe thinking about those category pages that we talked about, maybe that would be a better thing to have on your homepage. Thinking about how you can have that context with that in that as well. So if it is Beauty Therapist of the Year, maybe add, making sure that you've got the word 'award' within that heading will help you take context for all of this stuff as well.

Kelly Rose: Okay.

Jules White: So you've got the process. It could be the, so thinking about how would Google take that information and understand it if it didn't have the rest of the context of the page?

What could you add in to help with that? Maybe that is the 'applying for the awards process' or something like that. The process of applying for the awards, or something that just makes it clearer and within that context, really. What else have we got here? So we've got a couple of rogue H5s at the end of the page here.

Using SEO Tools for Better Analysis

Jules White: This little tool I'm using is a little Google Chrome plugin. It's free, it's amazing. I use it every single day.

It's called All in One SEO Analyser. So it's A-I-O-S-E-O. I would definitely recommend getting it. This immediately will help you, like you can come onto your website, click on this little thing and it will tell you this important sort of SEO stuff around your website.

Kelly Rose: Perfect.

Jules White: Yeah, and you can even click on it. So you can click on it and see what H2s have you got.

If you want to take all the noise away, you can see that. Just looking at your pages and thinking about that in terms of, like, if I'm wanting this page to rank for Beauty and Skincare Awards, what are the subtopics within that that would also be relevant in having those as headings within the page? It's something that I can usually tell if people have done anything with their SEO from this because it's such a common thing.

It's such a common problem. Our website builders unfortunately set us up to fail with this a little bit because we adjust the headings to make it look pretty. Whereas actually, it's so much more important for us to be thinking about that structure behind the pages. Again, this is even more important with AI as well, because the AI bots will be going through and reading this structure on the page as well.

Enhancing User Journey and Content

Jules White: Think about that in terms of like the most important things coming into your website is that user journey. Making it clearer for people to, they know where to go because they know what categories are relevant for them.

Then that backend stuff of making sure your page titles and descriptions and start with your most important pages first. So start with your homepage, maybe your about page, and maybe the judges' page as well. But I mean, I tend to say focus on the pages that are closest to the sale. So actually, maybe it would be those category pages.

Making sure those are set up first correctly. Then sort of go from there. It's an evolution. You're not going to fix everything overnight, but you've got some quicker tweaks that you could add in there as well. Then just thinking about the page and if there's any wasted space on the page as well. This section on the process, is there any way you could make this less of a wall of text?

How could you break that up with bullet points, or is there anything in there that doesn't need to be there? Right. At this point, like with this, I love the fact that you've got three steps. That's really important. But ideally, what we want it to be is step one is this first step that they need to take. So whether that is like, click here to choose your categories or use our easy, like whether you could have something that made it simple for people to decide whether a category is for them or not.

Step two is the next thing that they need to do. Then step three is, we want to sort of think about the transformation there. So yeah, whether that is attend red carpet. Thinking about what's the benefits to them there, maybe, and having that as part of that step three, that transformation. This is what their life is going to be like after they've even applied for the awards, or you know, because obviously even just the process of applying is going to be helpful for them, I'm guessing, in their business realistically.

Kelly Rose: Yeah, absolutely. I think even just applying, people really get like a vision of what they've achieved so far and where they want to get to in their business.

It kind of reminds them sort of how far they've come and what the vision is for the future. So we have so many people that say they're so, you know, much more motivated after applying. They feel so uplifted because they've forgotten what they've achieved and where they were before, and you know how far they've come along.

Then attending the red carpet award ceremony is such a great marketing opportunity for them. You know, we have professional photographers, videographers that are capturing that content and then they can use that on their websites against, you know, the photo backdrops and their social media and things like that.

Yeah, it's a great point actually, because that transformation piece is really important and people do get such a transformation even from applying. So yeah, thank you.

Jules White: I think if you haven't talked about that anywhere on your website, like the benefits of applying for beauty awards. Even if you just did one article page on that and just hearing you, the passion of you talking about that as well.

Maybe get somebody to record you, or even you could listen back to what you've literally just said then, and you could expand on that. But that's something that will also help. Like that's something that could then be ranking in itself in Google of what are the benefits of applying for beauty awards, or, you know, definitely, definitely get that on there and then linking to that in different places as well.

So almost like a blog post of this is why you need to apply, really. Definitely.

Kelly Rose: Yeah. Amazing. We'll definitely do that.

Importance of Links and Domain Authority

Jules White: And then just one quick little thing before we finish as well, just talking about links. So I did have a look at your judges' pages, and I noticed that you are linking to a lot of Instagram pages from the judges' pages.

I would maybe suggest if it works and if it works with what you're trying to achieve, linking to their websites could be more beneficial both for you and for them. Because what that essentially does, so you've got lots of judges here who are very prestigious in the beauty and aesthetics and beauty industry, basically.

By you linking to Instagram, you are telling Google that your website is linked in with Instagram. Whereas actually, if you were linking, for example, if you were linking to Katie Godfrey's website, then Katie Godfrey's website is going to have its own domain authority on Google. Very recognised within the industry.

Very prestigious within the industry. What it does, from you then linking your website to her website, it helps to almost put you in the, what's the word I'm looking for? Almost like put you in the arena with those people as well. So I would definitely suggest if it works for what you do, then maybe think about that.

Of adding, yeah, their website links to yours. It's all part of just making you that, increasing your authority within the beauty industry in Google's eyes as well.

Kelly Rose: Yeah, of course.

Jules White: And it's even better if you can get them to link, if they're ever linking, get them to link back to your website as well.

Those website links are, I mean, ultimately our website is our content that we own. We don't own our Instagram accounts. Actually, all we can do to build up our own authority and also build up those judges and like the awards winners as well, and you link to them, linking to their website is something that could be really, really helpful.

As you build up your authority on your domain, then that is something also that you can promote as a benefit from people applying to the awards and if they then get mentioned on the results pages. That then gives them a valuable backlink to their website. That's also another benefit of somebody actually going through and getting through to the finalist.

So I would definitely think about doing that if you can. And links are so important. They're critical really for SEO and for the way that everything works in terms of the way that the internet works and people understanding how everything links together, really. So, yeah.

Kelly Rose: Yeah. That's such a good point because we actually asked the judges if they want to be linked with their website or their Instagram, and nine times out of 10 they say their Instagram.

So actually going back to them and saying what you've just said will be really helpful. So yeah, we'll definitely do that.

Jules White: Definitely. I think it's so common and people will do that. They will often just link to their Instagram, and it's not helping then.

It's not helping your own domain. It's not helping to drive more traffic to the place where you actually make those sales. So I think it's, and yeah, it is. I'm all about building content we own first, so I definitely am. Absolutely passionate about that, really. So, yeah.

Kelly Rose: Amazing. Thank you.

Jules White: So hopefully, that's given you some pointers. Any questions?

Kelly Rose: I think the only question I had, just linking back to what you were saying about perhaps putting like, a blog with what the awards can achieve for you if you enter and then become a finalist or go on to win.

The Value of Blogs and Written Content

Kelly Rose: So I know, you know, years ago blogs were like the gold standard, weren't they? If you had like a blog and it did really well, you know, you'd be ranked really highly on Google.

Would you still say that blogs still have that sort of weighting on a website? Is it still worth adding content to a blog, so once a month or however frequently?

Jules White: So it all depends on the website. It's a bit like anything in marketing and SEO. The answer is always, it depends.

I definitely think that blogs can, the reason that blogs are so powerful is because they are written content, and it's easier for Google to understand that. I think it doesn't necessarily mean that you've got to create a ton of content and you've got to constantly be creating blogs. But I think if you can have some articles on your website, and even if you don't think of it as a blog, you just think of some pages on your website that help to increase your authority, help to support those sales pages, which ultimately your checkout pages for all the different categories are your sales pages.

If you can have something on there that helps to improve that and to link to those sales pages as well, that's where the value is, really. So it's not necessarily on creating, and it's definitely not on creating content for the sake of it, but it's just thinking about, okay, what are the important things that I need to talk about?

We probably think about this more. A lot of businesses probably think about this more for social media. They'll think about their content pillars and they'll think about those kind of things, but don't necessarily think about their core topics on their website. And I've got a couple of episodes around this, which I will link back to.

I'll link in the show notes. Thinking about that in terms of, okay, and it doesn't need to be even called a blog or anything. It will literally be like, you could just have like, 'what's in it for me?' or 'the benefits of applying for the awards' and have that on your homepage. Maybe have it in your navigation menu somewhere.

It doesn't have to be like a top navigation thing, but it could, you could have that under like as a dropdown under the awards process or those kind of things. Definitely having that in there just helps to raise the authority of your site and just helps as Google's crawling through your site, it helps Google to understand why you are that expert on this.

So you could, I definitely would add things in there, like if you've got any stats from people who've actually won the awards, any testimonials and those kind of things from people who've actually been through the awards process maybe, and the benefit to their business. Mentioning that within that article. That could be something that you mention it with a graphic or a visual, but also having that written word on there as well, those written words on there as well, that is really, really valuable and can make a big difference.

So, yeah, absolutely. A roundabout way of saying that, yes. It's not necessarily that blogs are important, but written content on your website that shows your authority is very important.

Kelly Rose: Yeah. Testimonials is definitely something we want to focus on more, and we've started to talk about it within the team because we've, you know, seen people that applied and won last year, and they've come back and reapplied this year.

Within their entry form, they've actually said, you know, what they've achieved and how like their income has gone up, you know, by 50%. How they've had amazing opportunities come their way if it's, you know, been speaking on stages or being featured in the press. It is such a big thing, and that's why we do the awards.

That's why they were created was to give people a platform to really showcase the businesses and the amazing work that they do. So yeah, that's been amazing. It sounds like I've got a lot of work to do over the next week, but this is helpful.

Final Tips and Encouragement

Jules White: Well, don't think of it over the next week. Please, please just do little tweaks, little tweaks here and there.

Actually, yeah, and think of it as an ongoing thing. Your website is the asset that you own in your business, and actually it's something that will, there will always be tweaks and, and always be things as we. As we move forward and the changing world of search and the changing world of online business, it's something that, that it will evolve over time.

So don't feel like you've got to do it all at once. Definitely.

Kelly Rose: I know I get so focused on things, I'm like, oh, it has to be done like right away. But do what you said and focus on the quick wins first.

Do that, and then focus on those category pages and then go from there. So, thank you so much. That's been amazing.

Jules White: No, you're very welcome. It's been great. I've actually really loved diving into it as well. Thanks. Been really good.

Kelly Rose: Yeah, it's been so helpful. Thank you so much.

Jules White: You are very welcome. So before we finish, I would love you, Kelly, just to give yourself another little shout-out.

Just remind people of what you do. I know we've just been looking at your website, and most importantly, where they can connect with you and find out more.

Kelly Rose: Yeah, absolutely. So I'm Kelly Rose. I'm the Director of the Beauty and Skincare Awards UK.

You can visit our website, which is www.thebeautyandskincareawards.co.uk or Instagram, which is @thebeautyandskincareawardsuk. We're all about celebrating the industry as a whole. We have a really diverse range of categories, so no matter what corner of the industry you are from, there will be something in there for you.

Our red carpet event is coming up in November, so you've still got a few months to apply. Yeah, we really look forward to seeing your entries.

Jules White: Fantastic, fantastic. I'm so glad that you mentioned your website before your Instagram as well.

Kelly Rose: Yeah, I'm learning.

Jules White: Absolutely. Definitely. So if this episode has made you think about your website and think about some ways you would like to explore making it better, just little tips and tricks that you can actually use to get some quick wins, then I would love you to book a Power Hour.

You can go to my website. I will link to that in the show notes as well. Let's dive in. Let's have a little look at your analytics and see what's going on with your website, or if you need some help just setting those up. I can also do that for you as well. So thank you so much for listening and thanks Kelly for being here, and I'll see you soon.

Bye.